


Time to Depart

by misura



Category: Sword Song - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Background Het, F/M, Mostly Gen, Open Marriage, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 20:06:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14722754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: "Is it a mercenary's life you've developed a taste for then?" inquired Rafn. "A hard life and difficult, especially for the wife who would accompany you. Unless you plan to leave her here?"It was a fair question, asked by one who had some right to ask it. Even so, Bjarni felt he resented it, and Rafn Cedricson for the asking.





	Time to Depart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chantefable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/gifts).



It was Kraka who brought the news; as great an honor, or nearly so, as if the Chief had come himself. Bjarni remembered Kraka having handed him the sword he had been proud to call his, until the Lady Aud had gifted him a new one, suggesting he put aside the other one for his son.

For that memory alone, he would have welcomed Kraka. Add to that an unexpected invitation to row second oar - _second!_ , on the Chief's galley this summer with only Kraka himself taking precedent, and Bjarni could not but regard Kraka with great fondness.

"Of course," said Bjarni to Angharad later that day, having shared the good news, "it may only be that the Chief means to show that he has forgiven my oath-breaking."

"You must take care to distinguish yourself, then," said Angharad, her eyes perhaps not quite as serious as her tone. "So that you may be asked again next year."

 

Nine months of working the land in peace, and three of raiding and trading for the men, while the women and children stayed home, to wait and pray and hope. It must seem a strange state of affairs to someone not born to it, Bjarni thought. As for himself, there had been times when he had thought it was not the life for him, when he had nearly lost a friend for taking offense at their suggestion that it would suit him.

Now, he wondered what had become of Erp, and whether or not any of the men rowing alongside him had ever thought of befriending a thrall. On this, their first voyage, there was to be raiding first, trading hopefully to come after, Rafnglas still being a new, young settlement, with little to offer in the way of trading goods.

Previous raiding had brought some thralls, to help with working the land. Bjarni had not spoken to them beyond a few words in passing: he and Angharad had not yet found themselves in need of any hands save their own to get the work done that needed doing from day to day.

"On your face is the look of a man too distracted by his own thoughts to notice the blade about to take off his head," someone said, not unkindly.

Bjarni looked up and smiled, though part of him was embarrassed. "Are we under attack, then?"

"That, we are not, else I would not be taking the time to have a few words with you," said Rafn Cedricson. "Is it your wife or your hound you miss most, then?"

"Neither," confessed Bjarni, which earned him a guffaw from Kraka, who sat near enough to overhear everything passing between the Chief and the young warrior.

"It seems the years have not lessened your affections for your dogs," said Rafn dryly.

"Hugin is a good hound, and loyal," said Bjarni, stung in spite of himself. "Still, it was not him who was in my mind, nor Angharad my wife. Rather, it was the raid itself, and our reasons for it."

"Deep thoughts for one so young," said Rafn.

Kraka guffawed again.

"A piece of advice, then, from one thinker to another," went on Rafn. "When at home, it is a fine thing to consider and think on matters. When raiding, it is best to concentrate one's attention on other things. Little point in asking yourself whether the man trying to kill you has good reason for doing so: if he succeeds, you will be as dead, and if not, you will feel poorly for having done no more than defending your own life."

"You are saying, then, that I should not spend any time thinking on what you have said?" asked Bjarni, his tone as innocent as he might make it.

Kraka crowed. Rafn moaned.

Bjarni grinned at both of them, any doubts and thoughts forgotten, at least for the moment.

 

Bjarni's happy state of thoughtlessness did not last, of course. It could not but pass, and pass it did, though not in such a way that it got him relieved of head or life.

Nonetheless, he kept recalling Erp's words, Erp's suggestion that Bjarni ought to choose a road based on the roots behind him and the heart within his breast. When Erp had spoken them, when Bjarni had argued against them before accepting them, he had thought that the truth in them had led him to return to Rafnglas.

Now, with two months' raiding and trading behind him, he wondered if Erp had not meant something else. Perhaps the life of a mercenary was not his; there were other lives, other roads that he might walk, with Angharad by his side, and Hugin also.

He resolved to speak with her when he returned home. That was all there was to do.

 

"It seems a pity to abandon the work we have already done," said Angharad.

"A greater pity to continue the work and have it be for naught as we abandon it later," said Bjarni. On the galley, the memory of the battle - if battle it could be called, and the captives bound for the slave market still fresh in his mind, things had appeared clear to him, and he had felt a great certainty that by his words, he would be able to make them appear so to Angharad as well.

He felt he had made a hash of the affair, though, jumping ahead to his decision, rather than simply telling her of his experience and allowing her to reach her own.

"Well, if you wish to leave, I will of course go with you." Looking at Angharad's face, Bjarni found it difficult to read her mind.

On the one hand, from what he knew of Angharad, he did not think that she would have assured him of her intention to leave with him had she neither the desire nor the intention to do so.

On the other hand, he could not but feel he had not truly shared his reasons for wishing to leave and, in failing to have done so, had also failed to properly explain himself to her.

_Does it matter, if only she will go with you?_ The old Bjarni, Bjarni thought, would have said that it mattered not at all. Then again, the old Bjarni likely would have scoffed at the notion of caring one way or the other about a girl. A dog, yes, but not a girl.

Hugin, seeming to sense Bjarni's mood, butted his head against Bjarni's leg, and Bjarni sighed and scratched the ever favorite spot behind Hugin's ears until both man and beast felt at ease with the state of the world once more.

 

"Word has it that you intend to leave us again." No Kraka this time, but the Chief himself.

"Not for a while yet. We won't leave you lacking hands in a time of need." That was only good manners and common sense besides. "But eventually, yes. I have decided that this is not the life for me, after all."

"Is it a mercenary's life you've developed a taste for then?" inquired Rafn. "A hard life and difficult, especially for the wife who would accompany you. Unless you plan to leave her here?"

It was a fair question, asked by one who had some right to ask it. Even so, Bjarni felt he resented it, and Rafn Cedricson for the asking.

"The answer to both your questions is 'no'," he said.

Rafn nodded, expression pleased, as if he had expected nothing less and only wished for Bjarni to confirm that which he already knew. It ought to have softened Bjarni's mood, but he found that it did the opposite. What reason, he asked himself, to ask a question if one already knew the answer?

"If your mind is made up, I suppose there's nothing more to say on the matter."

"I suppose there isn't," said Bjarni, for though he rather thought there was a great deal more to say about it, he was not at all sure that Rafn Cedricson was the man to which he wished to say it.

On the other hand, he reflected, Hugin by his side, who else was there to talk to but Angharad, to whom he had already failed to explain? Gram might listen willingly enough, only what did Gram know of life away from the settlement, without bairns or a wife to worry about?

True, Bjarni had a wife also, yet when he looked at Ingibjorg and Gram, and compared them to his and Angharad's situation, he could not but feel it was a thing wholly different, nothing alike at all.

 

Word spread quietly as the time of the harvest came and passed, and every once in a while someone would come to Bjarni and Angharad's steading to trade this or that, so that by the end of two months, they owned a fine collection of goods, as well as a second horse and a new saddle for Swallow.

On the final night before their departure, Rafn invited Bjarni to come to the Hearth Hall, and he once more told the story of how the Barra fleet had emerged victorious in battle against the ships of Vigibjord and Vestnor.

"A fine tale, though I doubt not you'll have finer still to tell, when next we meet," Rafn told him, after.

Had Rafn had a wife or daughter, they might have gone around to pour the ale; as it was, the task sometimes fell to the wives of others, or to the men themselves.

Bjarni thought that perhaps there was a tale there, also, though perhaps not a happy one, and thus he judged it better not to ask. "Perhaps I will," he said. "Perhaps not."

"Spoken like a Chief." Rafn grinned, to show he was only making light.

"It will be different, I think, to travel with a companion to protect, rather than for the purpose of selling one's sword-service. This time, it will not be glory and fortune I'll go looking for."

"You may find it nevertheless," said Rafn. "Or perhaps you already have."

 

Gram's parting gift this time had been one even Ingibjorg could not have objected to, Bjarni thought: a pup, just old enough to be parted from its mother, born to one of Astrid's get, though it showed but little. He hoped Hugin would not object to a companion, though small as the pup was, it seemed unlikely to be capable of provoking the hound, provided Bjarni divided his attention fairly.

"Rafn Cedricson bade me stay, and be his wife," said Angharad, as Rafnglas vanished behind them slowly. "I judged him to be in earnest, so I made my refusal polite."

It was so far from what Bjarni had expected her to say - if, indeed, he had expected her to say anything at all, considering Rafnglas had been her home only for so brief a time, that at first he did not know how to reply.

He recalled the sum of his conversations with the Chief these months past, and the way the topic ever seemed to have wandered to Angharad, sooner or later, as often as not.

"Don't you think you might have enjoyed being the Chief's wife? Certainly," added Bjarni, "none would dare accuse you of witchcraft or the like, were you to hold such a position."

"Certainly, it would be a fine thing to never again be feared and hated for being something I am not," said Angharad. "I hardly think I need marry Rafn Cedricson for that, though, as pleasant as I may find his company."

Bjarni thought better of asking whether Rafn's company had been more pleasant than his own. It mattered not; she was here, now, with him, and what company she kept was none of his business.

"He reminded me of Gwyn a little, I think, though not as bossy," said Angharad.

Bjarni decided he disliked the tone of this conversation. "And who do I remind you of, then?"

"Nobody but yourself. Hence, my agreement to marry you, for memory is a poor reason to bind yourself to another person quite so definitively. So you see, there's no call for jealousy whatsoever, any more than I would be, if you were to strike up a friendship with some girl who reminded you of someone or another you'd been sweet on, once."

"The only one I ever loved before you was Astrid, and she was a hound, not a girl."

Agnharad looked at him with something closer kin to pity than Bjarni felt comfortable with. "In that case, I suppose I shall never be jealous at all, provided you do likewise."

Put like that, Bjarni could not but agree.


End file.
